As soon as they had opened the door, both sisters cried aloud. "Elinor!" Marianne's eyes widened in the soft, golden light. "Have you ever beheld such a marvel as this?"

"I have not." Elinor walked inside – not a shed, but a great space, larger by halves than Mrs. Jennings' drawing room. The floors, walls and ceilings gleamed like polished brass, and an odd contraption whirred in the centre of it all.

Marianne stepped inside the shed, then out again, then repeated this process several times before she exclaimed, "It is larger within than without! That is impossible. And yet it is true. My eyes do not deceive me."

"I do not see how it can be, and yet it so appears," Elinor admitted. "Some strange illusion is at work."

For the first time in many months, Marianne's face lit up with true wonder. "Elinor – do you think it could be real – that he could – that he might be a magician?"

"His speech is rather rough, dearest. More likely he is a day-labourer from the North."

I'm going to have a look at the entry and see what I can do.

Hey! I didn't have anything to do with this.

Any better now?

Here's a page of the best Forever Knight fanfic ever written: http://home.earthlink.net/~combsmfk/index.htm

If you never saw FK, think of it as Twilight with Real True People in it. Great stuff. Note, however, that one of the premises of the show is that to become a vampire you have to deliberately turn away from the door to Heaven. So, a strongly religious flavor.

The Strange World of Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan Fan Fiction

The horror... the horror...

Fade Manley @15: I remember those!

IMO, the greatest political fanfic written to date was Dan Sinker's fake Rahm Emanuel Twitter feed. Sinker was brilliant.

Equilibrium by augustbird is a mashup of Flowers for Algernon and Sherlock (the TV show) - the essential plot concept of the former, with the characters and setting of the latter. (I've never seen the TV show, but knowing it's Holmes and Watson in the present day is sufficient.) The arc of Watson's intelligence growing - remember, he wasn't exactly an intellectual lightweight to begin with - and Holmes' reaction to it is amazingly rendered.

I'd probably still be displaying more of it online if it had been more...well. Competent. I like to think I'm better at pacing now, and attaching something more like a coherent plot to a given "story".

I am however, waiting for the Making Light gnomes to be nominated as a Yuletide fandom...everything else has been.

=====

SMOKE (early Season 6)

Spike sniffed the early autumn air and caught the unmistakable smell of Gauloise cigarettes. That was odd. He ambled from one street to another, following the smell, until he tracked it to its source at the Espresso Bar.

Sitting out front at a sidewalk table were three of Glory's warty hobbit creatures. They'd shed their rubbishy brown robes and were now wearing turtleneck sweaters, berets, and sunglasses. One of them was awkwardly smoking a Gauloise while the others watched.

"Oi, what's up with you lot?" Spike said, not unamiably, as he seated himself in the fourth chair.

"Bonjour, Your Anomalously Semi-Good Vampireness," said the wartiest of the three, trying not to look nervous. "I am Dreg, and these are Murk and Skitter. We are moving on."

"Our god is dead," Murk volunteered.

"And this leads to smoking Gauloise?"

"Yes. In sidewalk cafes. We are having existence."

"Ah ... got it. Good job," Spike said after a moment. "Where'd the new program come from?"

Dreg beamed. "We were helped by Lewis, a most eminent scholar who works at the Barnes & Noble near the mall. He found us wandering sorrowfully in the Self-Help area. When we told him our god was dead, and that we were condemned to a life of freedom, he instantly knew which books to sell us."

"We were surprised to find it is a known subject. Do gods die here often?" asked Skitter.

"No, it's relatively rare," Spike said. "Lewis is a genius. You should go back and ask him about the music and poetry that goes with it."

"Having existence is already confusing," said Murk.

"Ah, well. It's more about the journey than the destination."

The three ex-minions glanced around at each other and came to a decision. "Would you like to smoke with us?" Dreg asked.

"Don't mind if I do." Spike lit up a cigarette of his own as the other three lit theirs, and they sat quietly, watching the thin trails of smoke rise up through the light from the Espresso Bar and disappear into the darkness.

"Was Glory always your god?" Spike asked.

Dreg shook his head. "No. When we were young, she became our god through direct revelation."

"How's that work?"

"She appeared one day and told us that she was our god now," he said, looking depressed.

"She gave us our names, too," said Murk.

Spike took a slow, thoughtful drag on his cigarette. "You know," he said, "around here it's traditional to get a new name when you change gods."

All three of them brightened immediately. "Yes, please," said Dreg.

"Do we need a credit card number?" asked Skitter.

"No, it's free. ... Right, then. When you get the hang of it, you can rename yourselves if you want, but starting now, and for as long as you like, your names are" -- he pointed around the table -- "Bebop, Howl, and Road."

"Bebop," said the minion formerly known as Skitter. "It has meaning?"

"They all have meaning. Lewis can help you with that."

"What about Blotch?" said Howl (formerly Murk). "He has been visiting Lenscrafters. We are meeting him here."

"Blotch's name is now Sphere."

"He will like that."

"Road," said Road. "Road."

Spike nodded. "Road."

Road sighed contentedly. "It was of course a tragedy that Glory died, but ..."

"We must put it behind us," Howl said firmly. "I have been reading articles in the magazines at the laundromat, and what you do with tragedy is put it behind you. They all say so."

"That they do," said Spike. "You're good with that?"

"I am. We are," said Howl. "We have had enough essence. Existence is better."

Here's mine.

Speaking of RPF... this is a category I mostly stay away from, but Close Your Eyes and Think of England is a stunning exception. PG-13 for bawdiness but no actual sex, funny as hell, and based on a real incident; apparently David Tennant was gobsmacked to find out about Dr. Who slash during a TV interview.

Graduate Vulcan for Fun and Profit -- more Reboot!Trek, slightly AU from the movie because Jim still ends up on Tarsus IV (and has a whole slew of medical issues as a result). Extremely character-driven, including a Vulcan Starfleet Academy instructor who is also a survivor of the Kelvin. Funny and deep by turns, and fairly long -- there's a link to the second part at the end of the first section.

"You built a toaster that resents bagels," Clint pointed out. "Which is kind of a flaw. You know. FOR A TOASTER."

"Bagels are hard to toast," Tony explained. "You'd resent them, too."

And TNH, that Buffy fic's fabulous. And we totally need to nominate the Gnomes for Yuletide.

I have blueberries and genmaicha green tea.

(Oh, and I can seriously second the Toasterverse rec. Hilarious stuff, got me laughing out loud, and the subsequent fics and Phil Coulson's files of the Toasterverse are well worth a look as well).

Nativity by Milkshake Butterfly. It's really very brilliant. Bethany Sloane is 8.5 months pregnant. They didn't have room at Holiday Inn, there is no barn. There is however a Wal-mart.

and then to quote directly:

"The Metatron ran into Lucifer in Aisle Eight--Snacks, Cookies and Fruit Juices. The Serpent of the Abyss was wearing a dark gray pin-striped suit and had just stolen a packet of Oreos, if 'stolen' was the right word for taking them off the shelf and casually breaking them open with the sense of entitlement only the very rich and the very evil seemed to have"

Like, what if they normally eat vowels?

Maybe they had a population explosion back when I used to do more disemvowelling, and now that oversized generation and its offspring are slowly starving.

Eventually I'll finish uploading the epic Snape/Evan Rosier romance (written in 2004) that inspired the name -- the annoying part is hand-coding all the italics. However, the Live Kennedy Universe Hornblower stuff and the Law & Order: UK fic are complete stories. Apparently what inspires me to write is if the source material kills off Jamie Bamber.

Here's a Downton Abbey/BtVS crossover drabble, entirely spoileriffic, that was actually spoken word to amuse Patrick and Teresa, and written down later by request.

And here's a compendium of short things: Aubrey/Maturin for Mary Dell, hotheaded and coldhearted dragon and unicorn for finnyb, Rick Deckard and Sam Spade for Jay Lake, and the seeds for more.

I absolutely and utterly adored Relatives and Relativity. Thank you!

Then he discovered that she wrote slash-fiction about the character he played, which caused him to re-think some of the events of that visit.

There was, I think, foolishness on both sides, but it was a few years before he agreed to be a convention guest again.

Times have changed, a lot. Explicit gay porn isn't as hidden as it was then. Public figures didn't come out. But a scenario such as the one I recall, that would still be difficult to cope with.

Some of the other stuff there has definite fanfic characteristics: Mission Impossible meets up with the Marx Brothers?, or perhaps, if you're really in to old-time movies and radio, The Giant Gnat of Sinatra.

I have other fanfic elsewhere, which you'll find if you google the pseud; I just think the stories on AO3 will probably be most in line with what people here are interested in tasting, given they are Yuletide pieces and include a Young Wizards/Illuminatus!/Sandman crossover and a couple of crackfics - one serious, one humorous - for Zelazny's Amber Chronicles.

(And now you probably know who I am if you've been paying attention all year. Don't worry if you don't. I'm obscure.)

[The format of your URL is, unfortunately, one that gets things booted to moderation.—Idumea Primrose Cowper, Duty Gnome]

Far more angst-ridden than most of the others rec'd here, but the situation is *obvious* in retrospect.

Slowly working my way through the recs...

As for fic, the best thing I've ever written IMO - certainly the thing that makes me cringe the least upon rereading it a year later - was a Star Trek fanfic about collecting dogtags after a space battle.

The worst thing I've written that I still have evidence of was also a fanfic, written when I was sixteen and full of angst, for Gundam Wing. Everybody died, one at a time, except for one person who was still alive - and ALONE! WOE! - at the end. It's terrible, but I'm fond of it.

Worms are an excellent source of protein.

Also, am halfway through the Macdonald Hall fic Sarah linked, and it is BRILLIANT.

***

And a couple of things by other people that have made me happy that fanfic exists:

Green Ice (P.G. Wodehouse x Dorothy L. Sayers) by Adina. Bertie Wooster has a reputation for pinching things--necklaces, amber statuettes, umbrellas--a reputation that becomes dashedly awkward when Lord Attenbury's emeralds go missing. (Starts and ends in classic Wooster style, but in the middle it goes places that are more familiar as Wimsey territory.)

The Case of the Unwelcome Owl (Sherlock x Harry Potter) by FayJay. Sherlock receives a letter from one of the relatives he never talks about -- delivered, to John's considerable bemusement, by an owl. More bemusement follows. ("This explains so much," says John, near the end, and I find myself agreeing.)

Currently, AO3 has nearly 10,000 fandoms represented. If you can think of it, someone has probably written fic for it (or at least nominated it for Yuletide or plans to nominate it this year).

Speaking of which, before AO3, Yuletide was hosted on a private server and the 2003-2007 archives have not been moved over yet. It's worth a look - there are some great stories there.

Basically, there's a gent named Javier Grillo-Marxuach who has done a lot of TV writing. He came up with an idea for a series some years ago that failed as a pitch, so he did it as a comic book. The comic was successful enough that he was able to sell it as a series to one of the cable networks. Unfortunately the cable network was ABC Family, and they had no idea in the universe what to do with it so it was cancelled after a season. The series was called The Middleman and I recommend it highly: you can read more about it over at TV Tropes.

Anyway, he's said publicly that he doesn't plan to do any further stories involving the characters, but...

...back in November he wrote an early Christmas present for fans of the show. If this ain't crossover fanfic, I don't know what is.

But I still think John Winchester would have been eviscerated by any rare book librarian he ever had the misfortune to meet.

As a general recommendation: if one likes a story on the AO3, it's worthwhile clicking on the author's name to see what else they have written. One is likely to find some gems.

The other reason I love it is that back in 1991 on the GEnie SFRT, I wrote what was essentially a piece of fanfiction about scholarly research, though I didn't think of it that way at the time. It was later published as an essay titled "The Pastafazool Cycle." What it's really about is having a day job where you get assigned tasks like compiling a primary bibliography of Thomas of Ercildoune.

Middleman! YAY!

*dies and is ded of the squee*

Oh, and in an interview in December he said "Natalie Morales and I have remained close friends since the show wrapped, and she weekly asks me to get my head straight and write a "Middleman" TV movie and pitch it to ABC Family already. I'm pretty sure at some point she will prevail."

I will leave the topic for now, lest Teresa think "Why is the guy who gave me an orange peeler now taking up all my blog space to shill for a dead TV series?"

[We gnomes look at every not-yet-published post. But putting a note in the header will get us to look a bit sooner. -- Ororix Tulutian, Duty Gnome]

http://www.eblong.com/zarf/uru/story/lara-memoir.html

It's also polite to offer the gnomes something in exchange for their services . . . .

Thank you, you're very kind. I do think that the classic form of the Five Things story relies, more than almost any other, on a really close familiarity with the text, because so often they are dependent on the reader following the breadcrumbs back to the point of divergence for the emotional hit. They don't generally work too well for strangers to the canon.

I think you're probably a librarian.

Hah! I'll take that as a compliment, but in fact, I have a JD, not an MLS (although I work in historic preservation). I have, in fact, read the muster rolls that Bobby is looking at at the National Archives. It's a pretty remarkable thing, to handle documents that Merriweather Lewis wrote.

And Natalie Morales, do please keep after him to write us more! Such a good show. Written by and for My People, oh yes.

And this story has, I think, been linked before, but it's always worth revisiting The Zombie Master of Culter.

(Side note: I can't believe that someone actually wrote a Grounding of Group Six fic! And it's right down my alley, being of the and-what-happened-later variety.)

My.

God

I have justthisminute finished The Case of the Unwelcome Owl, and it's a wonder the people around me at Starbucks haven't all put down their papers or closed their laptops or whatever and turned stern and unsmiling eyes on my multiple fits of unseemly giggles.

I am gobsmacked. It is BRILLIANT.

Have also read Graduate Vulcan for Fun and Profit and am similarly gobsmacked. (I love that word. It really says it all.) Teresa, Smoke is a jewel. Thank you for sharing.

Since I have these two completed ST:TNG novels hanging about on my hard drive (still in need of de-Mary Sue-ing, I'm afraid, but at least I know it), I wonder if maybe it's time to admit to myself that, even if they're probably past their sell-by dates for publication, taking place as they do well pre-Death-of-Data, maybe I can still provide some entertainment value by popping them onto a fanfic site.

Anyone have any suggestions as to the most likely logical (heh) fit, content-wise?

And now I depart, to read more fic, and ignore many of the things I had intended to accomplish today in favor of Happy Skippy Reading Fun Time!

ObLink, since I've given up shame here: http://eblong.com/zarf/essays/naqqadah.html (SG1, AU, possible misuse of R&B music terminology)

And since it's fair to give some links for other people's work that sticks in my head: http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/38/thefearless.html "The Fearless Moral Inventory of Milhouse Van Houten" (Simpsons).

Wow, I forgot how absolutely destructive fanfic is to my work schedule. The last time I was regularly reading http://www.kekkai.org/synecdochic/sg1/ and subdirs , I was employed at a job I didn't care about. Can not afford that this weekend! Argh!

I'm currently reading my way through Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and I don' know whether to thank you or curse you because my laundry isn't going to do ITSELF you know but I can just read one more chapter and....

And I don't wanna be one.

So a lot of fan fiction annoys me to no end.

Worse, I hate TV. I hate most movies too. I have ADD and can't hold still for a lot of visual stories because they are RONG. And EVIL. And and and... So I tend to bounce pretty hard off a lot of fic anyway, because I neither know who the characters are, nor do I care... and I'm a really pretty character driven reader.

But Girl Next Door made me unspeakably happy. I love Phantom of the Opera (the musical is unbearably schlocky, but the book is great). And while not *all* of the characters in the strip are from stuff I have seen or sung, enough are that it's funny to me. Further, I can read a lot of the French without the help of translation software :D. (plz note: am soprano. unbearably schlocky rather goes with the territory. if you do not love the schlock, you'll probably stop singing. I sing... a lot.)

(For URLs, I am sure.)

[Actually, it was for formatting. A comma with a space on both sides of it (common in mad-lib spam. --Wroriox Rinis, Duty Gnome]

I know. It ate my life. My excuse is that it was recommended to me by an actual! rocket! scientist!

Although I must say the index of that site leaves a lot to be desired. Is it under G? No. Is it under T for Thompson? No. It's under J for the original author's first name.

Those of us with fic in the old Yuletide archive do keep hoping, but AO3 has had other issues this year due to exponential growth and other features and code fixes have had to be fast tracked to deal with that, so the import keeps getting pushed to the back burner.

On the other hand, I'm seriously considering signing up for an invitation from Archive of Our Own (and have also begun the task of de-Mary Sue-ing Novel #1 (in the TNG-chronological sense, although it's the second in writing order))...and I had an idea for a crossover fic that should probably have occurred to me as soon as I started reading this thread. And the beauty of it is that the category for Crossover Entity 1 has relatively few works, and none of them are crossovers with my Entity 2!

This could be fun...

IME you are likely to get a very big audience at that site, but if you go to AO3 instead, there will be more intelligent criticism and less "U SUCK" and "squee rite moar." Or you could post at both sites, of course.

If anybody has read Diana Wynne Jones's Tough Guide to Fantasyland, the added entries for modern urban fantasy in The Tough Guide to Fantasy Cities by marycrawford are blissful- I think they really get the flavour of the original.
("Love Triangle
"Female tourists will often be caught up in a love triangle. This generally happens in Undead Cities, where you will have trouble choosing between a Vampire and a human partner, and in Perfect Cities, where the government will assign you a perfect mate, but you will be drawn to someone unsuitable instead.

"One of these potential lovers will be manipulative, dangerous, and difficult; the other will be faithful, honest, and reliable. After much soul-searching, you will inevitably choose the former.

"If there are more species involved, i.e. Werewolves or Fay or Demons or Shapeshifters, your triangle will soon start to resemble a more complex mathematical shape, such as an icosahedron, and you will find yourself unable to move without tripping over some unclad and/or undead person. If this should happen to you, the Management advises you to leave town and start a new Tour under a different name.")

I will be happy to send you an AO3 invite if you like. (I post there and at fanfiction.net, and Jenny's right that the comments at the latter tend to be both shorter and less articulate, but there are more of them.)

But do you mean post the same work on both sites? About doing which I have no particular concerns, especially if I could set up accounts at each site with the same public name (which might not be my name...haven't decided yet, nor read the all the appropriate site guidelines), and since I'm not doing it for profit, there wouldn't be any copyright issues... Hmmm.

And Cassie, I would appreciate an invitation to AO3--thank you very much! My email in rot13 is ynheryzbbaf(AT)nby(DOT)pbz.

Thank you again, and excuse me while I try to stifle my giggles over how much fun this could turn out to be.

I'm afraid I haven't anything with me to share for tea. I feel like such a philistine.

Charlie has dreams still. Bad ones. He dreams of Passchendaele and the Somme. And now, while he dreams, Helen will cling to him, warm and soft and loving, trying to ease the pain of memory. The times he was shot, they gave him morphine, and the dreams were different.

The root of Helen's bad dreams is more recent. Charlie cannot know it, whether she tells him or not. He cannot experience it, and knowing of the dreams would scar him. He would, being what he is, take the blame.

The twins have no nightmares. They know not what they did.

I post most things to both AO3 and ff.net, though the latter has more stringent content guidelines so there are a few things that don't go up there. I use the same name for both; some people like one and some people like the other, so I'm just trying to broaden my fanbase... :)

Also, have you shared a link to any of your work at AO3 or ff.net and I missed it? Because if you haven't, and would like to share, I would look forward to reading... :)

I did have an invitation spare, and no particular plans for it, so I've offered it to the email address Syd specified.

Links to postings should stay here, I would think, rather than migrating to the current OT?

"Theories About Nuclear Winter" (Calvin & Hobbes) - click through to Part II at the end. Calvin and Susie in high school and after... yes, this is exactly how it would go.

"Amends, or, Truth and Reconciliation" (Harry Potter). Hermione in the postwar.

My recs on Archive Of Our Own. Especially "Lunch and Other Obscenities" as recommended above, and "Sisters of Bilhah" (Handmaid's Tale).

"Tomorrow is Waiting" by Holli Mintzer. Muppets. See Kermit again!

From Yuletide 2011: A few of my favorite stories cover Casino Royale and Billy Elliot. Also check out Star Trek: Deep Space Nine heartwarmers "The Life That Is Waiting" and "In the Files".

If you enjoyed Babysitters Club and have more than an hour, Baby-sitters Club The Next Generation #6: Byron and the God of California will reward your readership. It reads like Ann M. Martin, plus profanity and sex.

Crossover Colbert Report-Harry Potter fanfic (no sex, mind) where the Stephen Colbert persona is the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. Might it be hot-wrong in some nonsexual sense of the word "hot"? It's certainly funny. "Author's Note: I'm not sure if this counts as a fanfic, a parody of a fanfic, a fanfic of a parody, or all of the above. Whatever it is, I just had to write it."

"Second Verse (Same As the First)" by Friendshipper/Sholio. "The power disparity between the 'Lanteans and the other peoples in Pegasus is something I think about occasionally, but it's never addressed on the show." I don't know much about Stargate but this still kicked me in the gut.

And a couple fan-made videos, "Us" & "Closer", for those who are new to fanvids...

I'm currently caught up in "Amends, and Truth and Reconciliation", but I must note that I misread another fic as "Lurch and Other Obscenities". I consider this unfortunate which is why I had to share.

I don't generally feel like writing it. To the extent I write anything, creating the world and characters is the fun, easy part. Writing the actual story is harder.

So if in response you write more, is it fanfic² ?

Nancy @116: Good. Let's hope it's more chapters....

Guerrilla, by Glishara, in which Ivan Vorpatril is forced to take on the role he's always avoided. Goes AU (alternate universe) from Diplomatic Immunity. Character death is very much warned for, but the story is pretty awesome. (Vorkosigan universe novel)

By Any Means Necessary, by tevildo. Marvelous novel-length Ivan-and-By story, with awesome plot and world-building and politics and action. And it ends with Ivan/By, and earns it perfectly. (Vorkosigan universe novel)

Lilac City, by NWHepcat, in which Xander Harris discovers that although ten years have passed, he still has a role to play in the post-"Chosen" world of vampires and Slayers. (Written before the Season 8 comics came out, and catnip for fans of Xander and Faith.) (Buffy universe novel)

The Talking Stick/Circle stories, by Macedon and Peg Robinson, in which season 2 of Voyager never happens and far more interesting (and terrible) things do. If you were frustrated by the way the show entirely failed to handle the Maquis, and were intrigued by the relationship between Janeway and Chakotay, this is for you. It's a bit over-wordy and I could do without so much of the holographic cat, but it is the only piece of fanfiction to ever actually make me cry. Twice. (ST: Voyager, multiple novels)

The Student Prince, by Pandarus, in which Merlin and Arthur are students at St. Andrews. It requires no familiarity with the television show Merlin, really, and is just an entirely entertaining and witty romantic comedy. It's even better in podfic read by the writer, who is a marvelous reader. (If I could, I'd hire her to record all my stories.) (Merlin novel)

Responsible Science, by Lettered, a series of stories examining (primarily) Bruce Banner and his relationships with the other superheroes. My favorite is the one set in Uganda, for its delicate handling of the situation. (Avengers movie-verse, multiple stories)

The Brain Thief, by Holli, in which Young Sam grows up, meets a girl, cracks a case, and tells a lie. Not necessarily in that order. Utterly lovely, with brilliant world-building. (Discworld novel)

Sharp's Dragon, by Blackdisa, in which Richard Sharp is basically dragooned into the Aerial Corps. (Sharp/Temeraire crossover of unlikely skill and believability, novel)

The Sceptre at the Feast, by Ninevah_UK, in which Peter Wimsey follows his nephew's career over the years. So well-done, and heartbreaking. (Wimsey short)

And, to wrap it up with some levity: This is How the Universe Ends, by pervyfic and shewhoguards, in which Death runs into a problem. (Doctor Who/Discworld crossover, short)

And Wait Wait Don't Eat Me! by Nestra, which is pretty much exactly what you think it is: WWDTM, reporting on the zombie apocalypse. It has the dubious honor of having been linked to by the WWDTM staff themselves. (NPR RPF? short)

(SO going to be gnomed, but it looks like someone's around to approve, so I'll hit "post" anyway...)

Except they can't read very well yet. Do you think Watterson had his own child or just remembered what it was like at that age very well?

Well, to be fair I don't read as much published fiction as I used to. But I don't miss it, either: fanfiction takes the place of, well, "comfort-reading", really. The lightweight stuff I used to burn through at the public library. And, frankly, the best fanfiction is better written than most published genre fiction is, so there's that.

But also, the list I just posted includes stories over a decade old, from bookmarks I compiled slowly over the last few years. It's not like I ran out and read them all this week to recommend them to you. (Though I am tempted to reread one of the Ivan stories...)

Also, I'm noticing that it and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (something I'm also fond of) simplify Rowling's world.

Part of the fun of canon HP is that it's full of *stuff*. There's magical animals and semi-humans and customs.... Any recommendations for fanfic which does a good job of capturing that aspect?

Sadly, no, and the updates come at very long intervals. Same for Glishara's Emperor.

The down side of fanfiction Works in Progress: some of them never get finished, and in later years fans sit around in the pub and whinge to one another about the legendary X-Files story in which Scully went undercover with the Irish mob and got hooked on cocaine... (X-Files fandom in particular is littered with the corpses of epic unfinished WIPs: it was so bad that I gave up reading them for a long time, but have slowly been sucked back in.)

(Genius Locii just about made me cry, it was so beautiful. Again, thank you.)

Well, to be fair, isn't that the way the show itself was too? :P

Yule Morning, or Malvolio's Revenge, by ellen_fremedon (Shakespeare)
This one is ambitious, being an actual written-in-blank-verse sequel to Twelfth Night...but for my money, the author does an excellent job with it, and I'd like nothing better to see somebody stage this.

Elsinore, by Malkin Grey (Shakespeare/Supernatural)
The medieval versions of the Winchester brothers are recruited to investigate a haunting in Denmark. This one's in prose,

The Trouble With Harry, by Azar (NCIS/Doctor Who)
Suppose Abby Sciuto of NCIS had been one of the Tenth Doctor's companions, and then suppose a much earlier companion went missing in a way that involves Abby? Both canons are served admirably here, and the character voices are beautifully rendered.

From A World More Full of Weeping, by Azar (Narnia/Doctor Who)
One of the most thoughtful -- and most concise -- treatments I've seen of the "problem of Susan" from the Narnia series, with a perfectly pitched last line.

Wizards in Winter, by oniongirl (Young Wizards/DC Universe)
In which a problem for certain of Gotham City's costumed defenders is neatly and amusingly solved with the aid of certain teen-aged wizards from a neighboring universe. The interlacing of the two canons is ingenious, and the humor is clever without going too far over the top.

The Tale of Marian's Wedding by Gray Cardinal (Robin Hood - trad)
A straight Robin Hood story -- well, except where it isn't, and saying much more would be telling. This is one of those odd Yuletide stories that bridges categories.

There Will Be No Survivors (Except for the Survivors Behind the Curtain, But Pay No Attention to Them) by knightshade (Princess Bride)
In which Westley turns the Dread Pirate Roberts job over to Inigo, though not without certain complications and explanations.

Another Rainbow in Another Sky by Annie D (My Little Pony)
Yes, you read that fandom correctly -- and yes, you do want to read this. The summary at AO3 reads simply "Megan grew up", and that gives you nearly all of what you need to know, although one or two references reward those familiar with certain other '80s animated material. The balance of nostalgia and wry humor is beautifully done.

[Oooh! Doughnuts! -- Borisi Piwxos, Duty Gnome]

Yeah, "Amends" is rockin' and I look forward to further episodes. The author's written other stuff in the same universe, in case you don't mind spoilers.

One reason I read fanfic: a few years ago I had a recurring dream that Stephen Colbert was trying to teach me something. Once awake, I looked up nonfiction and fiction about Colbert to figure out what it was I was supposed to be learning. I think the fanfic helped a lot.

Where do you people find the time to read all this stuff...?

Two words:

Time-Turners. ;)

I might make a specialty of HP continuations-- that epilogue was so unsatisfactory. However, the thing that tripped me up wasn't so much the damage resulting from the war as that I was hoping the wizards would do something about their corrupt institutions. Maybe not something completely effective, but it's conceivable that they would be shocked enough to do *something*.

Any good fics along those lines? Anything about the house elves?

http://archiveofourown.org/works/364902

Here's a rec I got from here earlier: Going Native, a ST:TNG / new Battlestar Galactica crossover which ends the latter series in a more satisfying way than the canon (which sets the bar fairly low, I admit). It has an annoyingly high number of spelling mistakes, but is otherwise fairly well-written.

Oh, my, such a delicious conundrum: Whatever shall I read next?

A whole lot of good stories are on LJ, unarchived; there are also dozens and dozens of fandom and private websites (some pop out of existence daily, sadly). One way to find better-than-straight run stories is to check the panfandom recs community the Crack Van which is searchable by fandom and sometimes pairing.

I'd also like to second cofax's recommendation of Lilac City which, among other virtues, has absolutely convinced me that inzcverf yhex ng gur V-90 erfg fgbcf va Rnfgrea Jnfuvatgba.

Wait a minute, hang on, Making Light will have to wait a few days. I'm off to look up some Fez/Kelso slash.

I haven't started reading, because I have things that need doing, but I like the archive tags.

The only problem I had with the fic is that Znegva Serrzna vfa'g ungpurg-snprq rabhtu gb cynl Ybeq Crgre. (Not a plot spoiler, just a lovely worldbuilding detail.)

Fortunately, there are counterexamples.

"Tales of MU" gives you, as a bit of character-building backstory for the protagonist, fanfic she wrote as a teen. At less length, in Constellation Games we're told that the main character wrote some Sonic fanfic in junior high.

I bet there is something in The Big Bang Theory and Community that I haven't seen. The "Lemon Lyman" website from The West Wing might have RPF, though it's never stated. Vids "A Different Kind of Love Song" and "We Didn't Start the Fire" show that fanwork is portrayed in Supernatural, The Simpsons, and a bunch of other shows that went by too quick for me to quite catch them all.

And Star Trek: Voyager played with this, especially with that "Muse" episode where a pre-industrial playwright wrote stories based on Voyager characters and experiences.

I'm probably missing huge obvious swathes somewhere.

It also wouldn't surprise me a bit to find stories involving fanfic in the burgeoning Castle fandom, possibly more likely on fanfiction.net than on AO3.

And if memory serves, the author of "The Tale of Marian's Wedding", recommended above, has a couple of older stories in which various of the Kim Possible characters (and not necessarily the ones you'd expect) are involved with fanfiction.

Answer: Soon. The formatting differences required to get things to display nicely a bit of drudgework. Thank you for asking. :)

It turns out that as you said, it was just a news of progress update for HPMOR (now made clearer to indicate that that's all that section is).

Too tall, face like a hatchet and eyes like a trout. No denying that she was skinny, and that her face came to a point. But Harra Mattulich was beautiful, was the thing. The most beautiful lady in all the worlds, so far as Lem knew.

http://luminous.elcenia.com/

Twilight fanfic. I've never read the originals, only critiques of them, but I enjoyed these 2 very much.

I never particularly liked the Narnia canon because of all the Christianity. However, I read it at an impressionable age and it is indeed beautifully written.

But I just totally, totally love the idea of the time-traveling TARDIS up against the orthodox Christian view of the final judgment ....awesome.

There's some really good Narnia fanfiction that challenges or subverts Lewis' interpretation of Christianity, or at least how he condemns Susan for the crime of being a young woman. Went Forth Unconquered is one. Also The Ivory Horn, a crossover with Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" universe, is another. And a third is Food For Thought, a wonderfully-creative story told in the form of Livejournal entries.

Finally, for a truly gritty, adult, political Narnia, look no further than Bedlamsbard: In Constellated Wars is a great example of her work; it's a story set in the interstices of Prince Caspian.

(Which gnxrf gur aneengvir evtug hc gb gur cbvag jurer vg jbhyq unir gb nyybj bar jbeyqivrj be gur bgure (Puevfgvnavgl be Bowrpgvivfz) gb or qrsvavgviryl pbeerpg...naq vafgrnq bs tvivat hf gung erfbyhgvba, fgbcf fubeg. Abgr gur vavgvny qrqvpngvba gb Fpuebrqvatre! Jr'er tvira gur obk jvgu gur png vafvqr, ohg qba'g trg gb frr vg bcra.)

If you don't have an account... well, the wait queue is ENORMOUS after a kerfuffle with ff.net and explicit stories back this spring, but I can see if they've lifted the restriction on existing accounts requesting invite codes, and request one to give to you if a) it's available and b) you'd like one.

Sherlock is HUGE on tumblr and joining tumblr for Sherlock would be throwing yourself in at the deep end... but you'd find an endless source of material!

Despite reading lots of blogs on Tumblr, not all of them Sherlock related, I'm hesitant to get my own account. For one, I know it would eat time like mad, and I've managed to avoid Pinterest so far for the same reason. For another, and this is the really big one…
I met Benedict Cumberbatch last month. He was filming here in Louisiana and I drove an hour with my 4 year old to see if I could find the shoot. I did, he was standing outside, and I got his autograph. But when I did, and he apologized for not being able to take a picture because he was in costume, I said it didn't matter, I wasn't one of the Tumblr women, I wasn't there so I could post his picture online. And so now, I don't want to BE one of the Tumblr women. Even though, if I'm honest, I might as well be. Yes, I know it's goofy, and he's the only person I've ever gotten the vapors over this way, but there it is.

If, on the other hand, my gnoming was for reasons affiliated with a popular British actor, I apologize for nothing. I will scream his name from the rooftops without regret! Only, not just now, because my neighbors would think it odd at 11:36 at night.

I'm glad you got to meet him. I'm sorry it's dissuading you from joining in a source of fannish community -- but I readily acknowledge that his fans can get, well, over-the-top.

My admired actors are a bit less universally beloved, except for one who's most famous for BSG -- and he's, by all accounts, really gracious to his fans, and has semi-regular contact with one fan community, amicable enough that the organizer felt comfortable asking if there'd be pictures of him and a former co-star together when they participate in an upcoming charity golf tournament, and he said he'd see what he could do. Another object of my admiration has been very kind to my fellow fans who've met him in person; and yet another (with many more stage credits than film, though my love stems from a TV role) has a twitter and even answered a silly question I asked him over twitter about a very old on-set candid (he was doing needlepoint and I was having trouble making out the design).

I TRY to keep my admiration to a sane level -- where I love the characters, admire the actors' looks, and am happy when they say nice things in interviews and seem to have untroubled lives -- without getting into the Scary Stalker mode. I suspect, though, that if I met them in person, I'd find it difficult to say rational things. Silly, at my age, but still true.

[Broken link. (The fic was delicious.) Borx V'shov, Duty Gnome.]

Hilarious Vorkosigan fic. Pretty much anything else I could say about it would be a spoiler -- just go read it.

Would anyone care to mention finished fanfic novels which are generally considered classics? I'm especially interested in HP, but who knows what else I might like?

Tentative memory: I think Bujold usually has the worst thing happen to characters that they could learn from. (Tien would be an exception.) Just piling misery on characters wouldn't lead to as interesting a universe.

Greetings to the Duty Gnomes, and...I could go buy sandwiches, maybe?

[No, it would have been the format of the URL you were linking to. BTW, any link to twitter.com will always be gnomed. Not that you did, but others have, and I'm sure yet others will. Spamming links to various names at Twitter is Way Popular. -- Voritber Palmyit, Duty Gnome]

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but I'm now leaving out the URL I'd included on my original comment and subsequent gnoming report. It pointed to my Archive fan fiction page.

[The word "users" between paired forward slashes (/users/) is a frequent spam marker. Here's how it works: The spammer joins some innocent bulletin board somewhere, and puts all its spam links into its profile/user page. It then comment-bombs the world with links, not to, say, http://cheap-louis-vuitton-luggage.com but to http://www.stay-at-home-moms.com/users/38928 (Made-Up URL). Unless we filter on Every Single Bulletin Board In The World With Haphazard Moderation, that spam-laundering trick would get through. Unless... we take it down a level, to a common format within vulnerable bulletin boards. Your post, with your links, will get through as soon as a gnome gets to it (and we cruise the boards pretty often), just not instantly. --Rori Tumvlewaite, Duty Gnome]

***makes note to self not to make more work for the already hardworking gnomes***

My recs at 121 above are all complete, although I would only list The Talking Stick/Circle Stories as acknowledged classics.

Here are a few stories I would consider classics:

X-Files-- Iolokus by MustangSally and RivkaT. Available at AO3, search for RivkaT. Brilliant, disturbing, funny, and seriously challenging to the fans who wanted soft romance and angsty-Mulder. It's probably the most controversial story in the fandom, even now.

Farscape-- Weight of the World by Analise Here. The Peacekeepers take over Earth and Aeryn Sun has to go undercover for the Resistance.

Joan of Arcadia--Goodnight Moon, by Yahtzee. Works best if you know the show, but even if you don't, it'll knock your socks off. Definitely a classic.

Buffy--Phoenix Burning, also by Yahtzee. Buffy wakes up in the far future.

Stargate universe--Retrograde, by Martha Wilson, in which the Atlantis expedition is functionally abandoned for three years and things go very badly indeed. Universally beloved in the fandom.

Harry Potter--not my fandom, and the only recognized classic I can think of is AJ Hall's Lust Over Pendle, which is PG-rated Draco/Neville, written long before the end of the series, and rather unbelievable, but still charming (and long).

Other HP recs can be found here at PolyRecs. They have great taste: anything recced at PolyRecs is going to have proper grammar and spelling, and likely be well-characterized. And they don't recommend unfinished stories, IIRC.

In general, PolyRecs is a great resource for finding fic worth reading in dozens of fandoms, although a sad number of the links have gone dead (they're working on correcting that).

NSFW (but not graphic), there's a very specific reason I'm reccing it here, and put down your drinks first.

I finally put in for an AO3 account, and they're estimating the beginning of December before I get to the top of the queue. So I should probably write more, so I have more than one short fic to post when I finally get there. Thank you for the offers for accounts though.

I've only ever been on the outskirts of fandom, despite sharing lots of interests, so I still feel very insecure about making a bother of myself if I were to jump in with both feet. Although, I suppose jumping in with both feet is rather what being part of a fandom is about.

NaNoWriMo is looming: a challenge to write 50000 words in November. It might be worth having a go.

Yuletide will be starting sign-ups in mid-October and there will probably be an AO3 invite distribution for people who want to sign up for the exchange who don't have an account yet. If you're interested in writing for a rare fandom exchange, that might be a way to jump the queue. See my earlier comments for links to the brainstorming post and other information.

Fun, though. :)

Wouldn't be eligible for Yuletide, unfortunately, as the characters from Group B have quite the healthy fandoms on both AO3 and ff.net (to use a previous useful shorthand). Based on a bit of research, though, Group A's universe would seem to be within the stated parameters given on the link in Hilary Hertzoff's #186...

Hmmm...

Do they do artwork as well as textual fiction? How specific can you be? (E.g., This fandom, focusing on this character?)

In general only the fandom has to match but usually people who are signed up do an open Dear Yuletide writer sort of letter where they say a bit more about why they picked their prompts and what their favourite things are about the fandoms etc. Again the writer doesn't have to follow any of that but usually it will colour the story since it's written for that specific person after all. Sometimes some bending is required to make things fit from either side but usually it works out pretty well.

There is also Festivids for those of you who prefer to make fanvids.

Can anybody recommend Torchwood/Doctor Who fanfic focusing on Jack Harkness, specifically dealing with what he did between the last episode of his first stint with the Doctor ("Journey's End") and the first episode of Torchwood? Slash is obviously okay, though I'm more interested in story than in sex.

Mostly what I'm looking for is plot. Even pointing me at the right combination of tags to filter the frankly staggering number of fics into something more manageable would be fantastic. Or -- dare I hope -- a single tag?

I would start with Polyamorous Recommendations, a site linked upthread. (It's called Polyamorous because the reccers like many fandoms, not because all the stories are about poly relationships.) They have, ISTR, quite a lot of Torchwood stories there.

Another option would be to look at the bookmarks on AO3 for Torchwood (filtering by tag is down right now, sorry), or try searching Delicious or Pinboard for Torchwood recommendations.